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Titanic tales: Women's voices missing from history of disaster

The Titanic leaves Southampton, England on April 10, 1912, in one of the last known photos before she went to her watery grave. The photo was taken by Henry William Clarke, chief engineer of the Southampton docks, and given to the Vancouver Maritime Museum in 1968 by Clarke’s daughter, Mrs. R.H. Hooper of Richmond.

Whether it's the rescue efforts in 1912 or the retelling of the tale, Deborah Welch says the sinking of the world's most famous ship is an issue that is "almost exclusively the playground of men."

"Almost everyone who has written about Titanic, in addition to many leaders of Titanic's historical groups, are men," says Welch, a history professor at Virginia's Longwood University.

Some of the female survivors penned poems and letters, but most of the prominent books by survivors were written by men.

This is despite the fact that the number of women who survived (324) was virtually the same as the number of men (325).

It's unclear as to why there are so few female voices in the Titanic's history. But Welch says it is likely a "reflection of the times."

That also explains the policy of evacuating "women and children first."

Nearly the same number of women and men survived, but women had a higher survival rate — 72 per cent of them lived, whereas only 19 per cent of men did.

"The story of men stepping back so women could be saved — to restore what they saw as the natural order of society — was seized to prove men were superior and women born to obey," Welch said.

This was strongly enforced for first-class passengers: only three per cent of the women there died. In third class, a little more than half of the female passengers died.

Still, many women held a strong desire to remain on the ship.

"Women didn't want to go off for different reasons. Most of them didn't believe that it was happening," said Rosalee Peppard, an oral historian who has focused on some of Titanic's female passengers.

She explains that it took time for women — and men — to realize that Titanic was not unsinkable.

The Encyclopedia Titanica also states that many women — for example, Bess Allison, Rosalie Ida Straus and Catherine Bourke, who all died in the sinking — not only chose to stay by their husband's sides, they argued and fought against the crew members who were trying to put them into lifeboats.

An excerpt from a 1926 poem written by Roberta Maioni — a 19-year-old who survived the sinking — illustrates this conflict.

"I saw women parting from their husbands and fathers. Some women clung to their husbands and refused to leave them, but the ship's officers pulled them apart — the women to live and the men to die."

As well, Welch says, most of the gatherings related to the Titanic's sinking in the years that followed also had a strong male presence.

"Certainly the British Board of Trade and the subcommittee hearings that followed the disaster were held by men and almost all the witnesses were men," Welch said.

She notes that when Lady Duff Gordon and her husband — both first-class passengers — attended an inquiry into the sinking, all questions were directed to her husband.

The Titanic leaves Southampton, England on April 10, 1912, in one of the last known photos before she went to her watery grave. The photo was taken by Henry William Clarke, chief engineer of the Southampton docks, and given to the Vancouver Maritime Museum in 1968 by Clarke’s daughter, Mrs. R.H. Hooper of Richmond.